According to Lakoff and Johnson the conduit metaphor and various attack and defense idioms are the most dangerous to an imaginative rationality, as they seem to create urgency, deny choices, and forbid examining of alternative options in favour of those that can be "proven".

A third implication is that methods which involve both rational analysis and creative exploration of vision are seen as the most effective if not the most efficient ways to achieve group coordination and co-operation. To backcast to fixed time horizons, for instance, is to use imagination to find the long term visions that "we will" realize, and then to use more rationalist modes of thought to determine what "we must" do to achieve the shorter term steps before that vision is within our grasp.